The opposite of love is fear. & answer to my riddle---what's the most powerful weapon
The opposite of love is not apathy or hate. The opposite of love is fear. Fear is the huge dark umbrella that encompasses the whole ugly family of thoughts that make up the dark side of our emotions, including hate and apathy. If you have a fear based mindset, you will have problems with hate and apathy because they all are close cousins, however fear is the ruling superpower behind it all. However, there is a more powerful thing than that most powerful beast called fear and that is the perfect love of God.
In the Bible, please read below what God says is the opposite of fear. Because they cannot stand to be in each other's presence, perfect love always wins over fear. And when fear has to leave, with it goes apathy, hate, jealousy, depression, murder, etc. because they travel in packs, like wolves.
1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
And when it comes to people who have made that crucial decision to make Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior, God then takes ownership of their soul, spirit, and body and then the below verse becomes a spiritual warfare weapon that each believer can wield to cast out the fear that always tries to come back to destroy us.
2 Timothy 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
The answer to my riddle---what is the most powerful weapon in the world? It is forgiveness, also known as the blood of Jesus.
Here is an explanation for y'all as best I know how to give it. Someone close to you has wounded you severely, either emotionally, sexually, relationally, monetarily, you name the offense from your own life and continue on. The offense was so traumatic that you are still outraged that you were treated so shamefully and repeatedly by this person. You have not forgiven this person, as of yet.
In the spirit realm, all is fine if you dont remember the offense or the person because we try to forget all the bad stuff and only remember the good times. However, when you remember---and a multitude of any type of triggers can bring the whole series of incidents back into full color dolby stereo movie replay mode---you feel those same hurt, outraged, painful, shocked, etc feelings and you feel angry again.
Again, in the spirit realm, here is what you are doing when you remember the hurt with the anger: you have the person responsible by the throat with your hand, either with one hand or both. You feel the need for revenge. You want justice. You want that person to feel what you felt when you received their abuse. It kind of feels good and right to be angry and keep your grip tightly around their throat. However, what you dont see is that behind you, fueled by your feelings of revenge and hatred and anger, is the devil and his demons with their hands around your throat. As long as you keep your hand on your perpetrators throat, they have the right to keep their hands on you.
However, when you choose to say outloud, to yourself is fine, no one else needs to hear it, I FORGIVE YOU, then you just exercised your choice to forgive and God smiles down at you and says, Right on! Good job! That's the way to do it! That's exactly what I want you to do.
When you forgive, you are, in the spirit realm, releasing your grip from off the other person. Now your hands can be used for something productive and fun and healthy, which is what they were created to do when God planned the creation way back when. You just got to free up your hands from the death grip of revenge because if you dont it will mean your own destruction, ultimately.
When you do that, when you say outloud I FORGIVE YOU, the most powerful weapon in the world, forgiveness, violently pries the grip off your own throat and the devil and his demons fall back and scream, Anything but that! Dont do that! We lose our control over you! Now we cant torment you! Dont say that you forgive! We hate forgiveness! We hate the blood of Jesus! :steam:
You should forgive, even the most horrible of abuses, everyone in your life because if you choose not to, you will end up being tormented by the powers of darkness and it will be because you didnt want to let go of your hurt. God has better things planned for your life when you choose to forgive. The things he has planned for you are super fabulous peaceful eyeopening freeing and you will not regret forgiving when you realize what God has in store for you afterwards.
It really does not matter if the person requests to be forgiven or not, because most people dont seem to care to ask for forgiveness anyway. It really doesnt matter if you feel like forgiving or not, it is something that must be done for your health.
God will help you do the forgiving, just ask for his help right before you do it. Then God will free you from the devil's grip and God will begin his healing work in you to apply his salve to your deepest wounds so that you can feel what love and acceptance and respect and dignity and friendship and trust are all about.
I read the book A Child Called It and I felt all my abusive childhood memories all over again. I have been saying outloud, I FORGIVE YOU, to my perpetrators each time I remember an incident. They are never around me when I say it because I have pretty much ended those relationships long time ago for my safety. I have no desire to restore those abusive relationships. The farther away from those folks I can be, the better. And I sure will never trust them again either. I learned that the hard way.
For real, God is still healing me (layer by layer, incident by incident) and I am experiencing freedom. I am able to breathe much better now. Now I cover myself with the blood of Jesus on a daily basis as my protection.
The most powerful weapon in the world is in my pocket and I wield it with violence against the forces of darkness. Forgiveness will set you free and allow you to start your journey back to health. It's for real. This is the truth. I hope this helps some of you.
I dont want to make your pain feel diminished by my explanation. I am really sorry you have been hurt by people in your life. The pain will linger until God does his healing work but the anger will leave soon after you say those three words. Nothing in your life that hurt you is worth being tormented now by that punk the devil and his hoardes of merciless demons. Get rid of those pests and free your own throat up for better things. And your hands will do you so much more fun stuff when they arent constantly strangling that person from your past.
